Barely 30 pages into John Boyne’s new novel, I knew I would not be stopping until I reached the end. It’s a page-turner. In the mid-20th century, the French writer Georges Simenon wrote hundreds of such novels: detective-procedurals, novels of passion, or on the darker mysteries of the human heart, all around 150 pages in length, designed to be read in an evening. In that pre-digital age, they were the very stuff of entertainment.
In the 165-page Air, there is a problem, several mysteries, and much skilled writerly manipulation of the reader. The facts and revelations are eked out. Surprises keep on coming. At 12:15am, I found myself looking at the time, at the number of remaining pages, and knew I must – and would – complete it. It is 54-year-old Boyne’s 18th novel for adults. Like Simenon, he is a writing machine.
The protagonist, Aaron Umber, a child psychologist, is flying business class from Australia to the UK with his 14-year-old son to meet a woman who is not expecting the visit. Aaron’s son, Emmet, a carefully drawn Australian adolescent, also knows nothing of this meeting, his father’s early life, the mysteries of his divorced parents’ marriage, or either of the family histories that have so profoundly affected events.
Air is the final novel in an “elements” quartet that includes Water, Earth and Fire, but knowledge of these others isn’t necessary for a satisfying reading experience. Boyne also wrote the seven-million-copy seller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He has often dealt with morally complex issues, although making the Holocaust into the setting for that young adult book was problematic for some reviewers. If, as the philosopher Theodore Adorno stated, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” one is certainly entitled to ask if there can be a YA novel that ends in an extermination camp gas chamber.
Air deals with age-discrepant sex – rape, by definition – and its multi-generational effects. It’s a hot-button topic. Aaron has had his own traumatic encounter with a much older woman very early in his adolescence, which has affected his relationships with women ever since. His ex-wife, Rebecca, an airline pilot, has an even grimmer history of sexual damage. Did this commonality lead them into their failed marriage?
The flight to Europe is a chance for Aaron to spend time with his son, but it’s also when he intends to explain the complexities of the past to the boy. The reason they are travelling to their mysterious destination requires it.
Boyne is not a stylist. His workmanlike writing is secondary to the propulsive plot. His careful structuring comes with a new revelation every few pages. The book bounces from the present of air travel back to the mysteries of Aaron’s marriage to Rebecca. Each of the flashbacks gradually fills the story, block by block. Characters grow richer. Insights occur.
This is not some contemporary novel without fulfilment. Air believes that matters resolve, and it works to that end. Redemption awaits.
While human motives may often be of the darkest black, all the awful details are not presented close-up. The horror is in the reader’s imagination. In Boyne’s version of life, actions still have consequences, faults, retribution, and crime its punishment.
Ultimately, like many prospective bestsellers, Air confirms the reader’s world. The novel might rattle the bars but it does not break them. It is vastly readable, thoughtfully engaging, unputdownable, a polished book by a master entertainer. Yet no matter how much we might admire Boyne’s skill, we all know that life is not like this, that it is infinitely more – and that some questions must always remain unanswered.
Air, by John Boyne (Doubleday, $35), is out now.
